


no winter

by forpeaches (bluecarrot)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, Incest, Loss of Virginity, Murder, Mutilation, Oral Sex, Pantsing, Psychological Trauma, Sex, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Vaginal Fingering, mostly i suppose, there should be a tag just apologizing for GOT reality, you know the drill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-28 06:18:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19388236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/pseuds/forpeaches
Summary: “Just talk to me,” she said.“Do we have to be wearing clothes?” he said — and oh, that was his real smile, she had missed it, she had missedhim,and she took his face in both her hands to tell him so.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 27 June 2019.

She cried out when it happened, and she hadn’t meant to do that.

She cried in earnest when she washed herself afterwards, stiffling the noise in her hands before she came back to bed, where Jaime Lannister lay sleeping and sated, his face turned away from the windows.

She felt like such a fool.

She’d expected pain, and blood, and how much of either she didn’t know, but pain and blood between her legs had been hers for going on ten years, it got her a good whipping about her duties as a lady and a long argument with her father that ended as usual with him tossing up his hands: _You will do what you want, Brienne, you always have._

And she wanted Jaime.

He wasn’t gentle, but she didn’t want him to be gentle. She wanted ...

He made a soft noise in his throat when she put her arm around him, and half-rose up on his right elbow. “Brie?”

“Shush,” she told him, and kissed his mouth and neck. It was rough, fresh with beard, coarse against her skin, and she hadn’t thought of that either.

“Don’t leave,” he said: and now again he was asleep, and again she was crying.

She’d expected to feel different, and she didn’t, and was disappointed. Shouldn’t it make a difference? But _why_ (she argued) should she feel different? Why should a man change her, even (she reddened) even _that_ man, even knowing how he sounded, his ...

He was looking at her.

She shifted on the wood bench, not meeting his eyes, and he turned away.

Was she different? The sword felt the same; food tasted the same; even her body felt unchanged, no more sore than when she’d ridden a new horse, had a change of saddle.

She blushed again, thinking of what sort of a horse she had tried now.

Jaime came and found her standing in the mud at the edge of the water, looking over the river, wishing she could strip down and swim in it. But the water was brown and muddy, the current swollen with rain, and she did not know it to trust its changed eddys.

He did not speak to her or touch her, and when she was ready to turn and return he came along, picking his way as carefully as she did over the rough ground.

A knight — she did not know him — spoke to Jaime, giving her a blank stare and a rude silence.

Jaime glanced at her for permission and then ignored her, speaking as though she didn’t exist or didn’t matter, exactly as she’d wanted him to do: and she began to trust him all over again.

In the evening he followed her to her room, standing awkward while she moved beyond him to shut and bar the door. “Brienne ...”

“Oh,” she said. “You’ve remembered my name?”

A ghost of a smile. “Didn’t I say it enough last night?”

Again she blushed, and hated herself.

He saw it. He’d always seen too much. “I’ll leave. If you want.”

“If _you_ want.”

He looked — he looked like he had looked the last few months, the last year maybe. Was that how he looked when he wanted to touch her?

She didn’t want him to go and she didn’t want him to stay and — “Just talk to me,” she said.

“Do we have to be wearing clothes?” he said — and oh, that was his real smile, she had missed it, she had missed _him:_ and she took his face in both her hands to tell him so.

  
He wanted her, that was obvious enough to both of them, but she pushed off his hand against her leg and he raised it to her hair, instead, tucking it behind her ear. “Are you alright?”

“Of course.”

“I hurt you.”

“Don’t be stupid,” she said: and he flinched. _Jaime_. “I didn’t mean ... you didn’t hurt me.

He was silent. “You don’t want me, now?”

“Jaime, I — I’m sore, and tired. I didn’t barely sleep at all, or don’t you remember? I am still here.” She wound her fingers in his. “You are here.”

“In your bed.”

“In my bed.” He wasn’t smiling yet. She leaned forward and kissed him, wrapping her other arm around his waist.

“Tomorrow?” he mumbled against her neck.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

She woke to him asleep and wanting against her leg, and kissed him until he stirred, and pushed her legs apart, and touched her with a clumsy stroke until she whimpered and pled for more. _Please_.

“But,” he said.

“Are you turning me down, ser?”

No, he was not.

“Tell me about Tarth.”

They were falling into a pattern — bed, fucking, then lazy conversation until one or the other fell asleep, worn out with war-practice and work around the Keep.

She liked it here on his chest, his hand in her hair, while she felt the rise and fall of his breath. “What do you want to know?”

“Anything. Everything. I’ve never been there, you know; I’ve never been that far south.”

“Northroner. Well, it’s warm there, all year long.”

“No winter?”

“No winter.” The waters were deeply blue, and they touched the sand all day long, seeking and withdrawing again; harsh grasses grew there, and little white crabs lived among their leaves, and pinched her toes if she forgot to be careful.

“You didn’t grow up there — on the water.”

“No.” She’d been raised in the Keep, the first child of many as they expected, until her mother died and so did her new little brother, both together in an afternoon. Her father hadn’t ever spoken her name again.

He came and say by Brienne’s bedside while she wept, saying little and comforting less, but he was the only one who saw her grief and did not judge her for crying. The septa told her to stop, it was unseemly ...

“My mother died in childbed, too. But she left us Tyrion.” He was quiet a moment, then: “And I had Cersei.”

She didn’t want to talk about his sister. “Women dying is common.” Too common.

“Is that when you decided not to marry, and have children?”

The boys had decided that for her. _Brienne the Beauty,_ she’d heard, and _A silver to the first to ride the beast._ None of it — not the taunts or the rough kisses or the hands down her front, not her mother bleeding out in a bedroom upstairs or the desperate suckling cries of babies born to other girls — made her more eager to wed.

But the link between wedding and children was not so absolute as she’d been taught. Maybe they had already began a child. Golden-haired, she thought. It would look like him.

She wished she wanted to give him one. “Jaime?”

But he was asleep.

She wanted to ask him about his growing-up; she wanted to know the truth of everything she’d ever heard about his father and the Imp and even the stories of him and Cersei.

... she thought she wanted to hear those.

But there were safer topics.

He’d come up with a game, saying it was his own invention, laughing when she disbelieved him and claiming he was far cleverer than she gave him credit for.

“That’s no mean trick,” she said.

He had her around the waist with his right arm, the left hand teasing, and he would not let her wriggle away.

Not that she was trying very hard.

“This sass must be answered on a trial by combat,” and he turned her neatly, as if she were a much smaller woman. “Name your fighter, wench.”

“My favorite knight is, alas, no longer a friend to the field— Jaime!”

“You take that back,” he said. “Or I’ll show you how well I can still handle my lance.”

She laughed at him, smothering it in her hands, because the moon was well risen in the night sky. “I think all that you men do all day is nickname your parts. Weren’t you teaching me some marvelous game?”

“Oh, yes. This is one Tyrion created—“

“I _knew_ it!”

“You know nothing, Brienne of Tarth. Be a good wench or,” his eyes dropped down to her thighs, and his voice dropped too, “or I won’t teach you.”

“Beg pardon, m’lord. Please educate me.”

“Very well. It is called This or That, and the rules are very simple. One of us makes a bet as to what the other will like best, and as long as you are right, it remains your turn.”

She considered him. “This sounds like an excuse to get my hands on your cock.”

“See? You are learning already.”

  
She woke up to blood smeared down her thighs and backside and was confused, stupid, thinking _But he had me weeks ago_ before realizing what this was.

  
She didn’t want to be touched, that day; she never did. He tried to rest his head on her belly, her breast, and she pushed him off. _No_.

When the sickly hatred feeling passed and she could bear to be around anyone again, she crept to him and curled around him, small and alone on his side of the bed.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Sorry? “It isn’t your fault.”

“No, but ...” He hesitated. “At least you know there’s no baby.

”Do you _want_ one?” she asked him, at last: but it was a long while afterwards, and he was pretending to be asleep.

She thought he wanted another child, perhaps even a child with her. He hadn’t raised or been able to acknowledge any of his own; he hadn’t been able to watch them growing to adulthood, not really.

He had spoken once of Myrcella and wept, saying _She died in my arms and I couldn’t help her, I couldn’t stop it._

Joffrey too had died, in front of them both and half the country, while only Cersei was able to touch him and scream out her grief.

And Tommen, the sweet boy-king. Jaime never mentioned him; she doubted it was from indifference. He joked of things that hurt him, she knew that — _I would lend you a hand, but I haven’t any to spare_ — but other pain he let alone.

She dreamt of darkness and her own voice screaming and a man on her and she couldn’t get him off of her, she _couldn’t_ , there were too many hands and they all held her down, she would be torn apart and where was Jaime, where was _Jaime_ —

She woke to hands on her and she was still in the dream, she pushed them away shaking and crying. _No_.

He looked at her, so still. “You were dreaming.”

 _I know that_. His hand was in his lap. _One_ hand. It wasn’t striking her belly and her chest. That had happened, it was real, but it was a long time ago and she was here with Jaime, she was with _Jaime_ and she was safe.

He was safe.

It didn’t matter. She couldn’t calm her breath. She had to say it aloud. “Don’t — don’t hold me, like that, if I’m —“

“I won’t.”

She shut her eyes.

He said: “I dream of them, too.”

She nodded. Swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

“You — your hand.”

He stiffened. “It doesn’t matter.”

“How does it not _matter”_ but he kissed her and fell against her, fumbling at her, pushing up her shift, and neither one of them had the argument they didn’t want to have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brienne isn’t a wimp; sex is just ... complex.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 27 June 2019.

_I’m fine_ , she told him, and lay there and sobbed into her arms, not to wake him, while he pretended to sleep.

He couldn’t sleep. Not really. He had always gotten up and left after he and Cersei — and anyway it was strange to sleep so near someone, strange to feel her warm against him, the soft sounds of her peaceful breathing.

She had gotten up and cleaned off and wept and fallen asleep, and now he raised up on his arm to see her properly. It was so rare that he could look at her like this, when neither was angry.

He was not altogether sure she was real; he wasn’t quite able to believe that this had happened. But her skin was warm. She sighed.

 _Brienne,_ he said _. Don’t you leave me._

  
And the next day she took him back into her bed and let him touch her, gods she let him put his mouth on her neck and her breast, and she tasted — better than he expected, even.

He wanted to taste other things but _wait for it, wait for it; wait —_ yes, he could be patient; hadn’t he waited years already for this?

  
She opened her legs and clenched on him inside and he nearly finished there, already. Brienne.

  
She dreamt he was one of those rapers in the forests around Riverrun and he wasn’t sure how he could ever touch her again knowing how she felt, how could he do that?

but _Your hand, oh Jaime_ she said, and he’d do anything sooner than have that grief on her face again and he couldn’t argue her out of caring, could he?

so he pushed her down and pushed up her clothes and she pulled him in and wrapped her legs around his back like he could drive out all memory of her abuse, and he tried, he tried.

When he came he choked and buried the noise on her shoulder, and she whispered something kind, something meaningless and gentle.

It didn’t matter, nothing mattered. He was a humiliation as a knight, a childless father, a lord without holding, he had nothing and he was nothing, he was broken, lost, just as Cersei always said he would be without her.

Brienne held him anyway.

 _It’s alright_ she said, as though his life had not splintered in parts when they met, as though he had any hope of ever again making a whole: and she didn’t ask what was wrong when he cried.

“I’m sorry,” he said, the next day. She had rose early — she always rose early, except their first night — and she had gone out, leaving kisses and promises and her warmth in the bed, for awhile.

He found her with Sansa Stark; the conversation split off as he approached. He heard _Ser Jaime says_ and then some signal was exchanged because Brienne turned, and saw him, and frowned.

Of course. He was a boor, an interuption and a nuisance. Sansa looked at him as though he were a plague blanket sent to her enemies — necessary perhaps, but distasteful.

He wished she could hear the noises Brienne made; would it change her mind?

Or were those false as well.

The Stark girl said some common words and left.

“I’m sorry,” Jaime said, when they were alone. “For last night.”

She stared. Scowled. “For what?”

“For ... for the crying.”

“Don’t be _stupid_ ,” she snapped

and he flinched away, couldn’t help it, feeling the hand on his face and its sharp rings, the way Cersei always wore her rings on her right hand so they would cut him when he was like this, when he was _stupid_.

“Jaime?”

Brienne. Not Cersei. _Brienne_.

He smiled, tight. “My apologies. It won’t happen again.”

He thought she wouldn’t want him in her bed that night so he stayed in his own room, drunk and half-sleeping, dreaming of his sister, until noise woke him and he stumbled to the door. _Don’t let her hear, don’t let it wake her._

 _Cersei_ was in her shift, trousers and tunic unlaced overtop; her hair was uncombed and her eyes were huge and swollen, she’d been crying, her freckles stood out livid against her winter-pale face, and she kissed him before he could speak.

He kissed her back. Missed, catching her chin. “I’m a little drinking.”

“I don’t care,” unlacing him. “If you want me, I — Jaime, tell me you want me.”

Yes, he wanted her, always wanted her, but — “Too drinking. Drunk. It doesn’t,” he gestured. “It’s not me, you understand. It’s the wine. Dornish, d’you want any?”

She pushed him down and it was a featherbed instead of a dirty forest floor, and he sank into the luxury. How good she was to him. How kind. “Brienne? It’s the wine.”

“Of course it is,” she said, and wrapped her legs between his. _Wench,_ he wanted to tell her, _tempting slut,_ but she was kissing him and he was asleep.

His head hurt and he was so tired and Brienne was being _mean_ to him. “Again,” she said, for what must have been the fiftieth time. “Your footwork is terrible, Jaime Lannister, you know better than this, they didn’t cut off your feet—”

And her sword hit him in the face, and he fell.

“My fault,” he found himself saying to the pageboys helping him stand, calling for ice. “My fault, Brienne. My arm slipped. I looked down.”

“I know that. Can you see? Stop swearing at me! Your eye is fine. The blood’s all from above it.”

“I know,” he said. “S’just swollen. Brie, I want bed. Bath and bed.”

Someone safely distant called out, “If I get a wooden sword to the face, will you take care of me, ser Brienne?”

“Ser lady prefers wood _below_ ,” and there was more laughter.

“I’ve heard stories of your skillset, ser Miras, and I prefer a man who only need to look at his feet when he’s _sparring_ ,” she said: and they laughed again.

“Brie,” because they were in her chamber, “Brienne, I’m sorry. It was my fault.”

“Shut up,” she told him, kindly. “Your head will heal. A gallant new scar, bravely won in the battle of the tourney swords. Jaime, _why_ did you drop your guard? It’s not just the hangover. You’ve been like this for days.”

He shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about it. “No bath?”

“Not from me.” She lay next to him fully clothed, unsmiling. “I could call one in. With young, nubile attendants, if you like. I’ll even ask for them to send up pretty ones.”

“No.” He reached for her with both hands and she wrapped her fingers between his left. “I prefer beatings from a battle-scarred knight to all the sweet kisses from all the pretty girls. Brienne?” because she was getting up again.

“What?”

“You won’t leave me?”

but he was asleep before she replied.

They lay in bed and she told him of growing up with mud between her toes and her legs striped like a tiger’s from beatings. Charting a skiff in the shallows.

He told her of jumping off cliffsides, feeling invicible no matter the height or his father’s hard backhand. Loving his own quickness and his body’s response.

Loving Tyrion, despite — or perhaps to spite — what Cersei said. _He’s only a baby, leave him alone_ when she cursed and spit at him. _He’s only a child._ And later on, when they saw how it would be with him, never reaching the height or beauty of his siblings, she cursed him even more. _He killed our mother!_

Jaime laughed at her. _Don’t be ridiculous. He didn’t kill anyone. He’s Tyrion, not a murderer._

_I hate him._

_Well,_ said Jaime. _I don’t._ And she couldn’t make him do it, not with all the languid eyes in the world.

He didn’t want to talk about Cersei, he _would not_ even if Brienne asked.

She didn’t say a word.

  
He dreamt, he dreamt.

They were on the road, traveling by night to evade some shapeless horror, and Brienne had tied him to a tree and kissed him until he was hard. _Please_. But she was pulled away by the Mummers and he begged not for himself but for her, he swore to give them gold lions and sapphires and his own hands, his head, his _cock,_ if they would only let her be. So they took his cock and had Brienne in the woods all the same, and the noises she made were not from fear and pain but pleasure.

He woke with his missing hand aching, his body and mind sick and cold with sweat. _Brienne_.

She wasn’t there.

He found her in the hall, wrapped in a sleeping fur, watching sunrise creep against the blank wall of the world. “Our room faces east.” _Our room_.

“I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Come back to bed.”

She shook her head. “I can’t sleep.”

“I don’t want you to sleep”, he said — but she only looked outward.

  
He dreamt Cersei was fighting him, pushing at him as he fucked her, hard like she wanted it and cruel like he felt. _Robert_ , she said, moaning.

He struck her. _Don’t you dare._

She laughed at him. _He’s a better lover than you, he’s always been better, you couldn’t fuck me properly when you had_ two _hands and you surely can’t do it with one_

and she called him _stupid_ and hit him again and again

He dreamt Brienne had taken him in her mouth, deep and hot. She sat on his legs, holding him there in the leaves, and said: _Light the fires, Kingslayer. Burn_ _them bright._

 _Please,_ he said, not asking for himself. _Please don’t hurt them anymore._

He dreamt his lover lay beside him, sometimes it was Brienne and sometimes Cersei, he loved both of them and wanted her, not caring who she was

and often she pulled him on her and said kind words, more gentle than either woman was in the waking world

and often she changed into a snake or a bear or wildfire or worst of all, she did not change but spoke to him in Brienne's voice

saying he was a fool for thinking he deserved anything good. _Everything you love will turn to salt in your mouth,_ she told him: and he knew it was true because it had happened already, and how could he dare to love Brienne, knowing it might be true again? 

He dreamt of having two hands and wept with the force of his relief

He dreamt he pressed his hands to his face and found again and again that there was only one, only one, he was lost forever

and then he knew he was awake.

"Brienne?" reaching out. _Brie_.

She mumbled something in her sleep and he pressed his body against hers, shaking, unable now to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> poor jaime.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written 28-29 june 2019.

“You were dreaming of Aerys.”

“What?” He laughed. “No.”

She was scrubbing her hands in the basin and now washed her face too, neat as a cat; she did not answer at once. “I heard you. I held you in my arms while you — while I heard you say it.” Those eyes, like she’d swallowed the ocean. “I’ve heard it from you before.”

“Heard what?”

“Burn them,” she said. “Burn them all.”

He was not burning; he was frozen to the floor. “I never. I _didn’t_.”

“We don’t need to talk about it,” she said.

“Then fucking well don’t.”

“Jaime,” she said, reaching, but he was gone.

  
He did not speak at dinner or supper either, sitting close enough to avoid comments, far enough to prevent speech.

As though she would have demanded something he wouldn’t give, she thought, annoyed: but that was Jaime.

  
She went to her room and then to his, seeking, but he wasn’t at either, and the serving-girls wouldn’t tell her; their blank stares meant they _could_ not.

So she waited, and asked no questions, and fell asleep on her feet.

He found her that night and took her by the hand, tugging her close; he pushed her against the wall, and she pushed back harder, lifting him, legs entwined, a supporting hand under his ass.

He let his head drop to her shoulder, shivering.

Neither spoke a word.

  
Late that night she tried to touch him again and he, nearly asleep, pushed her again, his hand flat on her chest. “No.”

It was the first word he’d spoken to her in over a day.

She sat still. “What is wrong with you?”

“Nothing. Nothing is — why do you think something is _wrong_ , why does something _have_ to be — why can’t I simply not _want_ it, don’t I get to say _No_ —“

“You can, you always can, Jaime —“

“Don’t touch me!” he said. “Don’t you touch me.”

She had not.

“Don’t. I’ll hurt you.”

“You won’t.”

“I will. I have. I _will_. Don’t, don’t _let_ me—”

“You won’t.”

“I have,” he said, and shut his eyes. “I _have_. I made you cry.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters,” he said. “You matter.”

And how could she argue that? She folded her legs under herself instead. “Let me tell you a story.”

“I’m not a child. I don’t need to be comforted by stories.”

“Bold of you to assume it’s comforting.”

He smiled at that, barely: but he was her Jaime again, he was here. “Alright, ser. Then tell me.”

“Once upon a time,” she said

 _There lived a little girl in a stone house on an island, where the waters are crystaline and blue, and the skies are so bright at midday that the smallfolk go to sleep, and work instead when it is dark. She was the daughter of a great lord, and she would grow up to be a princess._

“I don’t _like_ stories about princesses and lords. Can’t you tell me something more interesting?”

“Try not to be rude. I know it’s diffcult for you.”

He shut his eyes, grumbling.

 _She would grow up_ (said Brienne) _to be a princess — that is what her father said, and her septa, and all the girls and boys who came to ward said the same thing._ You will grow up and be beautiful, _they said, and sometimes they smiled a little when they said it_ _but mostly they were kind, and so she assumed ..._

“Brienne.”

“Do you want a story or not?”

_When she was twelve her blood came, and she locked herself in her room and cried and cut up the bedclothes and would not allow anyone inside, for two days. She knew by then that she was not beautiful, and she knew that she would be no princess, and she knew most of all that what she wanted, she could not have._

_So she called for her father and when he came, he came alone. He trusted her and he loved her; why would he need guards?_

_The girl closed the door behind them and locked it, and when he asked her what she did it for, the girl held a knife to her own throat._

Jaime opened his eyes.

 _I_ _am no princess, said the girl. And I do not want to be a queen. I want to be a knight. I want to serve._

_You do not know what you want, said her father. You are a child._

_She pointed at the bloody sheets. Am I a child or a woman? she said, and he could not argue; he could only let her have her way._

_So she grew older and taller and uglier —_

“Brienne!”

_She grew uglier, and the uglier she became the more certain of herself she was. People do not bother to lie to ugly women._

_The more she saw of men and women and the world, the more stories she heard. About knights, sometimes. Sometimes the stories were about a queen, who lived in a castle_ _— a proper castle — and her brother. The queen treated the brother as a husband, she heard. She heard that story a lot._

Jaime bit his mouth and did not speak.

 _The brother was the most beautiful man in the world,_ she said, and smiled at him _. So_ _people said. The beautiful lord did this and that, and he was so young, and so talented,—  
_

“I don’t like this story.”

Neither had Brienne. “I promised herself that someday I would meet this man. Test myself against him. Battle, tourney, I didn’t care.”

“Well, and now you have. Bested me with a wooden sword in front of a dozen green boys and half the pigs in Winterfell.”

“I heard a lot of you. _Kingslayer_ , they said, and _sister-fucker._ I heard your father shits gold and your brother is an imp and a drunk, mind twisted as much as his body.”

He didn’t answer.

“What the stories didn’t say was that you would come back for me — no, don’t interrupt again — not once or twice but _three times,_ Jaime Lannister. You have helped me over and over and over, and it never brought you anything but argument and grief.”

“I don’t mind the argument part of it,” he mumbled.

“Yes, I know you like a chance to be clever. Lady Catelyn should have gagged you.” She laughed at his expression, then regretted it: his face did not change. “The stories said—”

“Stop. Stop telling me _stories_. You’re trying to comfort me and I told you I didn’t want that.”

“They said you slept with Cersei, that your bastards would sit on the throne, that you’d murdered the mad king and half his court and laughed like a madman yourself when Stark found you, and never tried to claim innocence.”

“All those things are true!”

“No one told me Cersei struck you when you said the wrong thing. No one told me she forced you, to get her way.”

“She never. _Never_.”

Brienne looked at him and didn’t answer.

After a long long time, when the horizon began to show itself under streaks of grey, he spoke again. “Did you truly threaten to kill yourself, if your father wouldn’t allow you to be a knight?”

“ _You_ made me a knight. Did you forget it?”

“I didn’t make you anything. Did you — did you really want to beat me at swords?”

She smiled, faintly in the faint light. “All the time. I heard about you and your wonderful accomplishments _all the time,_ and every time I was struck down and wanted to quit, I thought of you and I got up again. Do you regret helping me, in Riverrun? Coming back for me?”

He shook his head. “I promised you I would.”

“You promised me you _wouldn’t_ ,” she said.

He looked away. “Do ... do you regret me?”

“Never.”

“You cried.”

“ _You_ wept when they took your hand.”

“I don’t see you relearning to hold a sword, because you’ve had me between your legs.”

“Don’t,” she said.

He lay down and turned on his side, shutting his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> poor idiots in love (in love!!).

**Author's Note:**

> ... written on my phone.


End file.
